随便
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作者：随便 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
III. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION & ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICANS
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III.A. APAs Have Suffered Racial Discrimination: The Past
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[1] To the extent that affirmative action responds to racial discrimination, we need a better picture of the racial injustice that Asian Pacific Americans ("APAs") have endured. While this section aims to explore the history of many APA experiences, it is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it is a more modest attempt to offer background that will illuminate the nature of discrimination against APAs.
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III.A.1. The Law Explicitly Discriminated Against Asian Immigrants
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III.A.1.a) Immigration
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[1] While color-blindness is in political vogue among some contemporary circles, that was not the case in the nineteenth century, when the first Asians arrived in the United States in substantial numbers.54 As Chinese laborers arrived in Hawaii and California to work in farms and mines, White labor resentment against a "Yellow" invasion of "coolie" labor quickly mounted. America soon began erecting a wall around its borders that was distinctly color-conscious.
[2] In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act,55 the first comprehensive federal immigration law and also the first law ever to institute a racial restriction on immigration.56 As Chinese immigration slowed, Japanese immigration increased to satisfy the need of American businesses for cheap labor. But in 1907 and 1908, under significant pressure from the Western States, President Theodore Roosevelt extracted the Gentlemen's Agreement from Japan to stop issuing passports to laborers. As immigration from other Asian countries commenced, in 1917, Congress responded by enacting the Asiatic Barred Zone, which excluded most immigrants from an area encompassing India, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The advocates for this legislation, along with members of Congress and the Justices of the Supreme Court who later reviewed the laws, explicitly stated race-based reasons to prevent Asians from coming to America.
[3] In 1924, Congress took a more drastic step and barred all "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from coming to the United States.57 Since only Whites and persons of African descent (the latter only due to a post-Civil War amendment to the original statute) were eligible for citizenship, this law effectively barred entry of all Asians. Significantly, however, the law accomplished its racial effect without explicitly mentioning race, using instead the code phrase "aliens ineligible for citizenship."58
[4] Only in 1952, by passing the McCarran-Walter Act, did Congress more or less erase the color bar from our immigration laws. But even the McCarran-Walter Act was not racially neutral. Although it ended the Asiatic Barred Zone, the Act replaced it with an Asia-Pacific Triangle. Immigration of persons indigenous to this Triangle was capped annually to a mere 2,000-person upper ceiling. Under this limitation, a person of Chinese descent even if he was a native resident and citizen of a Western nation would be counted toward the 2,000-person limit. This racial attribution rule applied exclusively to Asians. Not until the comprehensive 1965 reform of our immigration laws could it be said that America had stopped explicit racial discrimination against Asians.59
[5] Discriminatory immigration laws obviously limited the numbers of Asians who could arrive in this country. But they also affected Asian immigrants and their citizen children already here: They sent an unmistakably hostile message not only to Asians in Asia, but to APAs already in the United States that they did not belong to America.60
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III.A.1.b) Citizenship
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[1] To be an American, an individual must not only be allowed to come to this nation's shores, but also must be able to become a citizen. Much as the law forbade most Asian immigrants from arriving, it prevented Asian immigrants who already had arrived from ever becoming citizens.
[2] The first naturalization law, passed in 1790, restricted naturalization to "free White persons." This was amended in 1870, after the Civil War, to include persons of African descent. Since Asian immigrants were deemed to be neither White nor of African descent, they could not become citizens. In numerous cases, culminating in a pair of Supreme Court decisions in the 1920s, judges repeatedly recognized that Asian applicants for naturalization were qualified in every respect but one: They were not White.61
[3] All Americans should be shocked to learn that naturalization rights were granted to Asians only in the mid-twentieth century: in 1943 for Chinese, 1946 for Asian Indians and Filipinos, and in 1952 for all other Asians. Thus, only a half century ago, America considered Asian immigrants so debased as to be barred from the fold of citizenship.62
[4] The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868, confirmed that there was another path to citizenship birth on American soil. Despite the express language of the Fourteenth Amendment63, the question whether Asians born in America would be American citizens was decidedly controversial.64 Not until 1898 did the Supreme Court resolve this issue in favor of Asians in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.65 But as recently as 1942, this principle of citizenship was formally challenged in federal court in an attempt to strike all individuals of Japanese ancestry born in the U.S. from the voter rolls.66
[5] Worse yet, ominous calls to eliminate the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have been heard in the Capitol.67 Indeed, the Republican party platform calls for amendment of the U.S. Constitution to deny citizenship to children born in America to undocumented aliens.68 Assistant Attorney General Dellinger has warned that this would create "a permanent caste of aliens, generation after generation, born in America but never to be among its citizens."69
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III.A.2. APAs Suffered as Second Class Aliens
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[1] Until only a generation ago, APAs were treated as distinctly second class aliens (one cannot properly say "citizens"). Unable to naturalize, they were politically disenfranchised and barred from participatory politics. Subject to widespread prejudice, they were often the target of racially-motivated violence, especially in uncertain economic times.70 By one count, there were over three hundred documented murders of Chinese as a result of racial violence in the West between 1860 and 1887.71
[2] At various times and places, APAs were denied social and civil rights that would have signaled respect as equals.72 They could not live next to Whites. They could not marry Whites.73 They could not learn next to Whites.74 APAs could not testify against Whites in a court of law, making it difficult if not impossible to enforce the few rights they possessed.75
[3] In addition, APAs suffered widespread de jure and de facto discrimination in their attempt to work for a living. California enacted a Miner's Tax in 1852 specifically targeting Chinese miners. San Francisco manipulated its licensing authority to close Chinese laundries while allowing White laundries to remain open.76 Even in the middle of this century, California barred alien Japanese (remember, Japanese immigrants could not naturalize) from fishing in state waters.77 What was left for APAs, then, were second-rate business and service-oriented employment opportunities, consigning them to become launderers, gardeners, house boys, and maids.
[4] Finally, APAs faced large-scale economic disenfranchisement through the alien land laws. Threatened by increased Asian competition in farming, various states forbid "aliens ineligible for citizenship" (the code phrase for Asians) from owning land. The first alien land law was passed in the State of Washington in 1886. California passed its alien land law in 1913. Upon judicial challenge, the Supreme Court approved these laws in a series of cases in 192378 on the theory that there was no racial or alienage discrimination, and that the State has the right to limit property ownership to citizens. Only after the Supreme Court signaled ambivalence toward these decisions, perhaps regretting its approval of the Japanese American internment during World War II79, did the California Supreme Court strike down its alien land law as unconstitutional in 1952.80
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III.A.3. We Imprisoned More than 110,000 Japanese Americans During WW II
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[1] The internment of Japanese Americans has been acknowledged by the President, Congress, and, most recently, the Supreme Court as a shameful episode in our nation's history.81 If people know of only one incident of racial discrimination against APAs, internment is likely to be it. Internment is important because it reveals much about the nature of persistent anti-Asian prejudice.
[2] The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, set in motion the eventual internment of over 110,000 persons of Japanese descent without due process. Over two-thirds were American citizens.82 Society generally assumed, as did General DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command, that all Japanese Americans were incorrigibly foreign, with dangerous loyalties to Japan. DeWitt testified: "A Jap's a Jap. . . . It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese and you can't change him. . . . You can't change him by giving him a piece of paper."83
[3] Accordingly, society would not distinguish between the enemy Japan and Americans who happened to be of Japanese descent. By contrast, society had little difficulty distinguishing German Americans and Italian Americans from the enemy states Germany and Italy. Neither group of European Americans was subject to blanket removal from their homes and imprisonment in internment camps.
[4] The Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the curfew and exclusion orders imposed on persons of Japanese descent in 1943 and 1944. In the well-known Korematsu case, the Court introduced the notion that "all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of any single racial group are immediately suspect."84 Despite this pronouncement, the Court rubber-stamped the government's unsubstantiated claims of military necessity, even in the face of readily-available evidence of stereotyping and anti-Japanese racism.
[5] Perhaps the Court's misstep was caused by the government's purposeful suppression of evidence from the Office of Naval Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Federal Communications Commission, all of which exculpated the Japanese Americans.85 On the other hand, even without such evidence, Justice Murphy knew enough to dissent vociferously in Korematsu, which he denounced as a fall into "the ugly abyss of racism."86 The governmental misconduct in suppressing evidence led a federal court nearly a half-century later to vacate the conviction of Korematsu himself, though the Korematsu decision itself remains unaffected.87
[1] Perhaps the Court's misstep was caused by the government's purposeful suppression of evidence from the Office of Naval Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Federal Communications Commission, all of which exculpated the Japanese Americans. On the other hand, even without such evidence, Justice Murphy knew enough to dissent vociferously in Korematsu, which he denounced as a fall into "the ugly abyss of racism." The governmental misconduct in suppressing evidence led a federal court nearly a half-century later to vacate the conviction of Korematsu himself, though the Korematsu decision itself remains unaffected.
[6] In 1982, a Commission charged by Congress to study the internment concluded that the "broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership,"88 not any genuine military necessity. In other words, it was a tragic wartime mistake. But as historian Roger Daniels has cautioned:
[7] the general tendency of educated Americans . . . to write the evacuation off as a 'wartime mistake' is to obscure its true significance. Rather than a mistake . . . the legal atrocity which was committed against Japanese Americans was the logical outgrowth of over three centuries of American experience, an experience which taught Americans to regard the United States as a White man's country . . . . 89
[8] Following the Commission report and during the debate over reparations for the internment survivors most of whom lost their homes, their livelihoods, their possessions, and years of freedom some members of Congress continued to insist that the internment was justified. Forgetting that most of those interned were American citizens, certain members of Congress even argued that internment victims should not be compensated unless the government of Japan compensated American veterans. Similarly, the Smithsonian Institute faced protests and bomb threats when it installed a exhibit critical of the internment.
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III.B. The Model Minority Myth
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[1] All APAs should be familiar with the model minority myth. A racial stereotype since the 1960s, the model minority myth portrays APAs as superminorities.90 According to the myth, APAs are a racial minority that has succeeded through education and hard work, and whose income and wealth match or exceed that of White Americans. The model minority myth emphasizes the success of APAs, especially as compared to other people of color.
[2] In the affirmative action debate, the model minority myth has surged in prominence. Politicians suggest either that APAs are top students who are singled out for mistreatment by affirmative action or that APA success shows that affirmative action is unnecessary.91
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III.B.1. The Model Minority Myth is Misleading
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[1] The numerous television reports, print articles, and speeches that describe APAs as the model minority depend principally on the claim that APAs have household incomes equal to or greater than those of Whites. Like other statistics, this single measurement can be misleading.
[2] First, APAs generally have more individuals contributing to household income than the national average, making that statistic an inapt basis for comparison.92 Second, APAs tend to be geographically concentrated in New York, California, and Hawaii, states with higher costs of living and above-average incomes for all residents.93 Third, comparisons based on census data are misleading since the census's definition of White includes persons of Hispanic origin.94 The more accurate racial comparison would be between non-Hispanic Whites and APAs.
[3] In sum, the data suggesting higher absolute levels of APA household income, if interpreted carefully, belie the supposed "equality of opportunity" proclaimed by affirmative action opponents.95 We provide further evidence below of continuing discrimination against APAs, notwithstanding their "model" status.96
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III.B.2. APA "Success" Has Non-Racist Explanations
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[1] While the picture of unlimited economic and academic success of APAs is inaccurate, thoughtful analysis still reveals relative success for APAs in education and income. It is true, for example, that a greater percentage of APA men and women are college graduates than their White counterparts.97 Rather than attributing this achievement to biological or cultural deficiencies within any racial group, we believe such differences can be explained by specific legal, political, and social factors that have shaped the APA community.
[2] For instance, our immigration laws favor highly-educated Asian professionals. The watershed 1965 Immigration Act expressly stated a preference for educated professionals, especially in the scientific, medical, and engineering fields.98 At the time, the Cold War and the space race demanded an influx of scientific elite to help sustain U.S. military-industrial dominance. Immigrants from elite families in Asia and other countries were attracted by and absorbed into the expanding technological economy.99
[3] In addition to immigration policy, geopolitical changes also influenced Asian immigrant demographics. The 1972 U.S.-China d閠ente and the 1975 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam profoundly realigned domestic and international politics in East and Southeast Asia, thereby rendering many Asian dictatorships politically unstable. Such instability, often accompanied by economic crises, precipitated the immigration of many upper and middle-class families from Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia.100 From 1965 to the present, the highly educated and upper/middle-class segments continue to be disproportionately represented among APA immigrants, especially those from East and South Asia.
[4] Finally, cultural reactions to ongoing racism may be another explanation for improved socio-economic mobility for APAs. This mobility may have little to do with anything essential to Asian cultures as much as their historically contingent reaction to limited opportunity. Professors Stanley Sue and Sumie Okazaki have argued, for instance, that ethnic, racial, and immigrant discrimination blocked off various avenues of success for APAs. Since APAs saw no future in politics, sports, or entertainment, they turned their attention toward education.101 And as they enjoyed mild success through education, this belief that educational investment is the sole path to success in America was reinforced.102 Indeed, this belief may have been bolstered by the model minority myth, which inculcated teachers to encourage and place high expectations on APA students while subconsciously discouraging or placing lower expectations on other minorities.
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III.B.3. The Model Minority Myth is Dangerous
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[1] Like any racial stereotype, the model minority myth hurts those who are its subject. Since the public assumes that APAs are uniformly doing well, they do not hear APA requests for help. This laissez-faire approach to all APAs persists notwithstanding the tremendous heterogeneity among the ethnicities that make up the racial category, APA.103
[2] Also, in difficult economic circumstances, the very same cause for compliment is condemned: APAs once seen as hard workers become unfair competitors,104 and anti-Asian prejudice is excused out of an assumption that APAs are doing too well. Even worse, Whites and other people of color may resent APAs not for who we are, but for the model minority myth about us.
[3] The model minority myth also harms other racial minorities. From its introduction, the model minority myth has been used to chastise other minorities, to tell them that they are inferior to APAs, in genes or culture. When the model minority image was introduced, the sociologist who described Japanese Americans sympathetically did so, he explained, to contrast them with "what might be termed, 'problem minorities.'"105 More recently, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray asserted in The Bell Curve that APAs and Whites were inherently more intelligent than African Americans,106 while Dinesh D'Souza argued in The End of Racism that APAs and Whites had cultures superior to that of African Americans.107
[4] Whatever else APAs decide about affirmative action, we should not allow ourselves to be used to attack other people of color.108 Pitting racial minority groups against one another represents the worst form of divide-and-conquer political strategy. APAs must refuse to believe that they are superior to Whites, non-Whites, or anyone else. This is not to denigrate the accomplishments of APAs or our hard work. But APAs must refuse to buy into derogatory stereotypes that other people of color have no achievements or shirk hard work. History teaches us that not long ago, the exact same criticisms were leveled at us, that we were the stupid, the unassimilable, the depraved, the criminal.109 And our own experiences, whether they be of racial epithets, glass ceilings, or hate crimes, reveal the continuing existence of racial prejudice.
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III.C. APAs Still Suffer Racial Discrimination: The Present
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[1] Many might agree that racism hurt APAs in the distant past, but question whether such racism continues in the present. They assume that APAs cannot possibly face discrimination because they are the "model minority." Although the Civil Rights Movement has unquestionably decreased the quantity and quality of racism against all people of color, racism continues to burden APAs. We may be optimistic about the future, but we should also be realistic enough about the present to realize that racism has not gone.
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III.C.1. Stereotypes Plague APAs
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[1] For example, stereotypical portrayals of APAs still mark us as unassimilable foreigners, the very same prejudice that contributed to racist immigration and naturalization policies, economic discrimination, and internment.
[2] Consider Senator Alfonse D'Amato's egregious caricature of Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the trial of O.J. Simpson. Judge Ito is a U.S.-born citizen, whose parents were in fact interned during World War II. He speaks English with a "standard American accent."110 Nevertheless, Senator D'Amato mocked him in a halting, ungrammatical, heavily-accented English: "Judge Ito loves the limelight. He is making a disgrace of the judicial system. Little Judge Ito. . . . Judge Ito with the wet nose."111
[3] These stereotypes, perpetuated not only by popular media, but by political leaders,112 help construct society's conception of APAs. In turn, such views help construct limits, such as glass ceilings in employment, in the lives of APAs.113 They also lead to racial harassment, as in the case of Marine Corps. Captain Bruce Yamashita.
[4] When Captain Yamashita entered Officer Candidate School, he had impeccable credentials. A star tailback in high school, he had been active in Hawaiian politics,114 had excelled in education, and already had a juris doctorate (J.D.) and masters in international affairs (M.S.F.S.) from Georgetown University Law Center. Nevertheless, at Officer Candidate School, he was hounded by racial slurs. He was told to "go back to your country," was informed that the U.S. had "whipped your Japanese ass"115 in World War II, and was routinely called "Kawasaki" and "Yamaha."116
[5] The slurs were not enough to deter Captain Yamashita, but he was later dismissed for alleged "lack of leadership." Captain Yamashita refused to accept this injustice and won eventual reinstatement years later with an official apology from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. This episode should give pause to all Americans. APAs in particular should wonder: If even "hyper-qualified" candidates can suffer such racial harassment, what fate awaits those who are merely "over-qualified" or just "qualified"?
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III.C.2. APAs Suffer from Employment Discrimination
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III.C.2.a) The Parity Concept Introduced
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[1] Because subtle, institutionalized prejudice is persistent but difficult to expose, civil rights officials began in the early 1970s to search for more practicable tools to root out racism. They began to compare the percentage representation of minorities in the relevant labor, business, or applicant pool (baseline percentage) against their percentage representation in employment, contracting, or university admissions (actual representation).117 "Parity" is defined as existing when actual representation approximates the baseline percentage. If a minority was under parity, government officials became concerned about possible racial discrimination. If a minority was at or over parity, they assumed an absence of discrimination.
[2] The parity measurement came into prominence after the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke118 Supreme Court decision in 1978, when Justice Powell announced the Court's "diversity" rationale upholding the constitutionality of some race-conscious admissions schemes. For a time, the turn toward a diversity-based rationale, measured in terms of "parity," allowed affirmative action to continue in the face of Supreme Court retrenchment on civil rights issues. As long as the Court was willing to call "diversity" a compelling interest,119 many forms of affirmative action could flourish in relative obscurity, under the patina of constitutionality left by Bakke.120
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III. C. 2. b) APAs Are Under-Parity or Would Be but for Affirmative Action
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[1] In many areas, APAs are not near parity.121 In academia, APAs are underrepresented in numerous fields, such as history (2.2%), sociology (2.2%), English/literature (2.1%), philosophy (1.8%), education (1.6%), psychology (1.4%), political science (1.3%), and law (0.9%),122 and are conspicuously underrepresented in higher education administration and management.123 Nonetheless, the predominant framing of racial discrimination issues in Black-White terms diminishes the significance of APA underrepresentation.124
[2] The same goes with APA contractors. As a case study, consider California, in which multiple local government studies have documented the under-parity status of APA contractors. For example, in San Francisco in the late 1980s, APAs constituted 20% of the baseline percentage of construction contractors; however, they received only 5% of the school district's construction contracts, and less than 1% of the city's overall construction contracts.125
[3] Similarly, a 1992 local study of city employment in San Francisco revealed that fewer than half of the municipality's departments met the 1990 census workforce parity figure of 2.9 percent.126 APA professionals in San Francisco are particularly underrepresented in the fields of public safety and judicial services. The city and district attorneys offices and police departments are at 50% of the APA parity rate or less.127 Periodic studies indicate that workforce parity for APA professionals in San Francisco is declining, with fewer departments today meeting parity than in the previous 10 years.128
[4] Finally, when APAs are at parity, it is often due to affirmative action. Take firefighters for example. In 1974, the San Francisco Fire Department had only four APAs out of 1800 firefighters. After a court-ordered affirmative action plan, the Department now has 174 APAs. As explained by firefighter Captain Bernie Lee, "[w]ithout affirmative action . . . Asian Pacific Americans would not have had the opportunity to enter in such large numbers."129
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III.C.2.c) Parity Obscures Discrimination Against APAs
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[1] From statistics that show APAs to be at or over parity, society jumps to the conclusion that APAs are free from discrimination. Unfortunately, these statistics do not tell the whole story. Not only do these purely quantitative measures miss qualitative differences in treatment afforded APAs,130 they also invite misconceptions colored by the model minority myth.
[2] First, just as the presumption that "under-parity necessarily means discrimination" is wrong, so is the presumption that "parity necessarily means no discrimination." The Asian admissions controversies of the 1980s illustrate that over-parity representation and discrimination against APAs are by no means mutually exclusive.131 Indeed, various studies reveal significant evidence of over-parity representation in certain fields coupled with continuing discrimination.132
[3] Second, the numbers showing over-parity status in one field might hide the related under-parity in other fields. Take the distribution of Ph.D.s for example. In 1993, almost seventy percent of all APA Ph.D.s were earned in engineering, life sciences, and physical sciences.133 And in these fields, APAs enjoy over-parity status. On the other hand, as of 1992, APAs were seriously underrepresented in the humanities and social sciences. Similarly, a study of San Francisco city government employment reveals that APA professionals are concentrated in the divisions of Operations and Finance, Education, and Health. Thus they may be over-parity as "engineers, accountants, analysts and technicians" but under-parity as "police officers, firefighters, or attorneys." 134
[4] Third, over-parity status at the entry-level does not mean over-parity status higher up on the promotion ladder, when APAs bump into the "glass ceiling."135 For instance, recent data show that, among all racial groups, APA faculty suffer one of the lowest tenure rates (41%), significantly lower than the overall rate (52%).136 Similarly, at the executive or managerial level in higher education, APAs occupy only one of every one hundred positions.137
[5] Fourth, facile inferences drawn from over-parity statistics deny the ethnic, class, and gender heterogeneity of the APA community.138 Aggregated group statistics offer a monolithic picture of APA success; but whatever economic and educational achievement has been attained, it is not shared uniformly by the various subgroups within the APA category. For example, most of the representation in higher education employment is attributable to East Asian and South Asian Americans. Just because East Asians, say, are over-parity (in certain fields, in certain career stages), one should not presume that all other APAs are similarly over-parity. Gender provides another crucial but ignored variable. Gender differences between APA men and women may be as great or greater than interethnic differences.139 To cite one example, APAs are the only racial minority group where men outnumber women in such a high proportion (79% to 22%) in full-time faculty positions.140
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III.C.3. APAs Are Victims of Racial Violence
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[1] Finally, consider the racial violence that continues to plague APAs. Although exact numbers are unavailable, various governmental commissions and community groups have detailed a disturbing rise in the number of hate crimes.141 In fact, according to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, in certain cities, such as Boston and Philadelphia, APAs suffer the highest per capita hate crime rate of all racial minorities.142
[2] A defining moment in racial violence against APAs occurred in 1982, with the murder of Vincent Chin. Mr. Chin, a Chinese American engineer, was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two laid-off auto workers, who blamed Japan for their unemployment. This hate crime "stands out as a perverse symbol of racist violence," for it reveals a sickening, irrational causal chain. The unemployed workers "transferred blame not only from the Japanese government to the Japanese people, not only from the Japanese people to United States citizens of Japanese descent, but finally from Japanese Americans to anyone unlucky enough to bear Asian features."143
[3] This horrific event catalyzed APA communities across the nation to unite against racial violence. While such community activism has increased societal awareness of the problem, hate violence continues to endanger our communities. For example, in 1992, Mark Cleaver, clad in military camouflage and heavily armed, shot three people to death, including Junko Nakashima, the wife of a prominent nursery owner. The killer's half-brother stated that Cleaver felt the Japanese came to this country, bought up a lot of land, and got rich while "Americans" remained poor. "He felt ripped off by the Nakashima family," the murderer's relative explained, "Wouldn't you?"144
[4] Even more recently, in summer 1996, Thien Minh Ly, a UCLA graduate was stabbed dozens of times by a suspect who casually noted in a personal letter that he had recently killed "a jap."145 Police investigation revealed the suspect's ties to a White Supremacist organization, and after meetings with APA community activists, the prosecution has sought a hate crime penalty enhancement.146
[5] Regrettably, there are simply too many incidents of racial violence to recount.147 Indeed, there are enough to warrant an annual survey by the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium ("NAPALC"). According to NAPALC's most recent audit, 458 anti-Asian incidents were reported in 1995. Southern California witnessed a striking 80% increase in such incidents from 1994, with New York and Northern California reporting approximately 10% increases.148 These hate crimes, which not only injure the immediate victim but also terrorize the surrounding APA community, should demonstrate even to skeptics that racial discrimination against APAs continues.
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III.D. Admission Ceilings: The Problem of Negative Action
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[1] Some evidence suggests that universities, concerned about too many APAs on their campus, have instituted informal ceilings on APA admissions. Certain politicians have argued that such admission ceilings on APAs result naturally from affirmative action for other racial minorities. They contend that once you take race into account in admissions, race can be a plus as well as a minus.149 Needless to say, this has been a source of great concern to APA communities. And given the issue's complexity, APA frustration is understandable.
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III.D.1. APAs Can Be Treated with Affirmative Action, Neutral Action, and Negative Action
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[1] To clarify matters, it is helpful to consider three possible regimes. First, APAs could be included in race-based affirmative action. Second, APAs could be excluded from affirmative action and treated indistinguishably from Whites who are similarly ineligible. Third, APAs could be capped by an admissions ceiling such that they are denied admission in order to admit more Whites (not other racial minorities). These three regimes may be called affirmative action, neutral action, and negative action.150 We discuss each regime in turn.
[2] Affirmative Action. Given that the model minority myth is a myth, it may make plenty of sense to include APAs, or at least certain Asian ethnicities, in affirmative action programs. Indeed, in those fields where a race-based affirmative action program is in place and APAs are under-parity, we recommend a presumption in favor of their inclusion.151 Although the ultimate decision is case-specific and fact-intensive, we believe that in areas of under-parity, some cogent explanation must be offered for their exclusion.
[3] Neutral Action. When such an explanation is offered, it will be reasonable to exclude APAs from the affirmative action program and treat them no differently from everyone else excluded, such as Whites. In other words, admissions will be neutral as between APA and White admissions. The rationale would be that since APAs do not warrant affirmative action in this particular case, they will be treated no differently than Americans who happen to be White.
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III.D.2. We Can Simultaneously Reject Negative Action and Embrace Affirmative Action
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[1] While it may be perfectly legitimate to treat APAs with affirmative action or neutral action, it is never appropriate to treat them with negative action. Negative action is illegal. APAs who are harmed by an explicit program of negative action can and should protest and file lawsuits, which they should win under current anti-discrimination laws.
[2] What APAs must understand is that negative action against us does not result from affirmative action for other minorities. In fact, in cases of proven racial disparities between APA and White admission rates, the causes have been either stereotypical treatment of APA applicants or other preferences, such as that for alumni children, who tend to be predominantly White.152 Furthermore, eliminating affirmative action does not eliminate negative action. Regardless of whether a prestigious university practices affirmative action for other racial minorities, it may still enact informal measures to limit the number of APAs on campus.
[3] In sum, the only two legitimate regimes, especially for APAs, are affirmative action and neutral action. The specific facts of the situation will determine which regime is appropriate. When APAs are not included in affirmative action (and given neutral action), they will suffer some indirect burden caused by the preferential treatment given to other racial minorities. But this burden will be shared across the board among all those who are not included in affirmative action, such as Whites. And for reasons identified above, we believe that the benefits of affirmative action outweigh the burdens, especially when they are distributed broadly.
作者：随便 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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给yankee来一篇系统的：)
